


Free, Relegated to Embers

by dwyndling



Series: chi [6]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Eternal Flames (Kingdom Hearts), Flame Liberator (Keyblade), Gen, Keyblade Wielders (Kingdom Hearts), Keyblade-centric, Keyblades (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22146421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwyndling/pseuds/dwyndling
Summary: There is a certain grace to the flickering of a candle. A certain elegance...to the way a flame casts no shadow.
Series: chi [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583548
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	Free, Relegated to Embers

_It is difficult to pinpoint why. Why fire? Is it one of the universe’s cheap jabs at his hair? Is it because he’s never suffered a burn before in his life? Is it...something he has yet to think of at all?_

Whatever the cause, fire now bleeds through his veins, something completely intangible and yet ever present.

The first time the chakrams ever appear in his hands, it is a complete and utter shock. It takes some getting used to; the metal discs swinging over and around his fingers as he familiarizes himself with the grip. 

_It’s just like playing frisbee. Except this time, the weapons return to him when he calls for them, spinning back into his own hands with lethal force._

He doesn’t know if the metal is normally warm to the touch, even as the discs are enveloped by flames time and time again. It’s hard to say through the leather of his gloves, and the fact that he himself is never the most accurate judge of temperature. 

Time passes like the flow of a river. He grows older. The chakrams do not change, except for perhaps, and this could very well be a trick of his imagination, growing slightly larger, to accommodate for his longer limbs. They start to echo with traces of familiarity over the years, if he was even able to feel such a thing as ‘nostalgia’ or ‘fondness’ for the weapons that have been by his side almost ever since he lost his heart. 

There is no presence for the weapons, in the void that he calls a chest. They flicker in and out of material existence, always just beyond a layer of gauze that shields his mind from the true In-Between. It creates no sensation when they appear, other than the weight of them in his grip. It serves as a reminder for the situation he has found himself embroiled in, where the material and immaterial have become intertwined in the worst of ways, and he no longer knows to which of the two he truly belongs to.

And then he is assigned to watch over Number XIII for the time being, and the pieces of a puzzle he has become familiar with over the course of a decade no longer fit together quite as neatly. 

It’s easy to rationalise away in the beginning. The upset to his routine is what is causing the odd sensation of something flickering in his chest. It’s merely the memory of annoyance, or novelty, or some other such reaction to sharing his after-work breaks with someone else for the first time. Hardly anything more. 

The amalgamation that is his social life gets shuffled to the back of his mind quickly enough at any rate, as he’s put on an assignment to the castle-cum-research-facility. It sparks up again once he’s presented with the living and breathing contradiction that is the Hero of Light, someone who’s heart is evidently so strong, so unique, so _something,_ that he is capable of pulling off such feats that defy nature. 

It bears pondering. But what would a Nobody know about the nature of the heart? He’s no scientist, and the memories of a golden youth are faint and blurred around the edges by now, even as they weigh upon him with their indentations. 

Two young voices chime together, and the sunsets are now irrevocably tinged with sugar and salt. His loyalties, which have always laid first and foremost with himself, begin to slowly unravel themselves...if only so he can examine them. Or at least, that’s the more comfortable thought that allows him some measure of sleep at night.

The situation...becomes even more complicated, to say the least. One thing builds into another, a slow fire in the base of his chest, that burns brighter and brighter until his flame is utterly spent, on the altar of what could have been. 

To finally be relieved of his non-existence...it would’ve been nice to see Roxas one last time. But even as the wish crosses his mind, it would seem that maybe Roxas is not so very far away after all...or perhaps that’s simply the delusions of a man on the brink of death.

The body, that was once awarded with the name ‘Axel’, turns to ash. 

Lea awakens with a heavy sensation between his ribs, something that refuses any name he tries to assign to it until he puts two and two together. 

_A heart. What a sacred and terrible burden._

_A heart, at last....and yet, it doesn’t feel as unfamiliar as I once imagined._

Things begin happening in quick succession after that. A trip to visit the little mouse king becomes a different sort of pilgrimage, and before he can think too hard about any of it or even begin to question himself, he’s stood before the sorcerer and asking for the impossible.

Unsurprisingly, summoning one of those fancy keys is no easy task. He doesn’t manage even a whisper of success before suddenly he’s being called elsewhere, and a heavy handed rescue mission is set into motion. 

Even with this new and precious burden called ‘humanity’, the chakrams still fly into his hands without thinking, some innate ability carried over from his brush with the immaterial. They feel as solid in his hands as ever, but somewhere, deep within the back of his ribcage, they settle with a warm and steely kind of structure. Something familiar amidst all the brightly colored newness, something stern and tainted among the rush of uninhibited sensation for the first time in a decade. 

Because the universe delights in his inconvenience, or some other such fickle glee, no keyblade appears in his hands until the whole ordeal is safely over. Nothing special flickers into being within his grasp, no magic suddenly ignited within his new (old?) heart.

And then, out of nowhere, it does.

Perhaps his muted reaction is a result of years worth of tamping down on emotional outbursts. Perhaps it’s because the brand new keyblade in his hands feels too oddly familiar to genuinely feel surprised about it. 

The handle is formed not unlike the grip of his chakrams, somewhat smaller but still relatively easy to adjust to. It feels natural to hold it in such a way, as he spends the next few hours tossing it from hand to hand and cursing when it keeps accidentally disappearing on him. 

As for the blade itself, it elicits much the same feeling. A flame, carved out of a material he has no idea how to identify, but seemingly some kind of metal. It’s vaguely warm to the touch, even to his own fingers which are far too used to handling flaming objects. The teeth of the key are formed out of the flame itself, curling into itself with jagged defiance.

It suits him. It responds to him well, and the Fire type spells that naturally flow from him ignite it into a light show all on it’s own. The magic flows from his fingertips, channeled down the length of the keyblade and into reality with an ease that bears disbelief. 

Simply holding it in his hands carries an odd and muted exhilaration, something that gets shoved to the back of his mind until he has a moment’s rest to examine it. A rush of pride envelopes him at the sight of it, along with a reassurance that glows golden in his chest. It’s a quiet and gentle euphoria, to hold his own potential so neatly in one hand.

Learning to use it...not so much.

There is a certain level of pride that has grown to sit in his posture over the years, and piece of him that was molded into what it is by his own ferocity and unwillingness to concede. He knows his own strength, knows he has the guts to do whatever is necessary on the battlefield. 

That same pride gets whittled down to splinters after the sprightly tea table knocks his feet out from under him and sends the flaming keyblade spinning across the clearing. Again. For the fifth or so time that hour...but who’s counting.

Sparring with the princess is something else. There is a new kind of battlesong that he hasn’t heard before, the ring of the metal of one keyblade clashing against another, a peculiar whistling in the wind. It sings in words he hasn’t learned yet, but slowly and surely translating the dance he learned with the chakrams into something that better suits this weapon is an instinctual matter. He picks up speed, and soon enough it becomes a matter of course to feel the keyblade shift beneath his hand into two familiar discs, to strike once, and then spinning back out as the weapon reforms itself.

The dance doesn’t falter. Not until they arrive at the wasteland that calls itself a graveyard. In the back of his mind, he had wondered what a graveyard for keyblades would even look like. Seeing it, it makes perfect sense, even as he wishes that it didn’t. 

The golden key that feels so warm and _alive_ in his grip...would it one day be cold and dusty like the keyblades scattered in piles every which way you look?

The battle begins, and soon he has no time to think of things like that. The eyes of his erstwhile friend are lost in a golden haze, and the waltz of battle threatens to move on without him if he doesn’t keep up. 

And then suddenly, his key is caught up in the grip of a terribly familiar face, and it _shatters_ into crystal shards. 

He feels it in his chest, as if the part of him that was most alive has suddenly become fractured in a lightning strike of pain. Even as the pain is quickly set aside in the rush and relief of finding the one person...the two people he’d most wanted to save, it’s enough to make him withdraw to the side of the battlefield, watching with a bitter taste in his mouth as his childhood partner in crime gets the stuffing beaten out of him by three very motivated children.

Ash to ash, dust to dust. 

_Isa will return. He will. And then I can say all the things I couldn’t, in that moment._

That golden glow has returned to his chest, coalescing into something even brighter for having been broken, and it’s with a certain measure of smug satisfaction that he cusses the superior out in his head, even as the keyblade returns to his hands in complete and unbroken glory. 

A heart. Something so heavy to carry around...and yet something his grasp has tightened upon, on the precious hurt and joy that complete each other. 

Fire still burns beneath. Has he changed? Probably. Now that the world is lit up in colors again, who knows what is possible. 

The key comes to his hand when called, flashing red and gold in the light of the sinking sun. Still, potential has coalesced in his grip, calling upon all the things yet to come, all the battles yet to be fought, the strength left to accrue. 

Terrifying, isn’t it?


End file.
